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La Haine (, ; released in the United States as Hate) is a 1995 French social thriller film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. Starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui, the film chronicles a day and night in the lives of three friends from a poor immigrant neighbourhood in the Banlieue of Paris. The title derives from a line spoken by one of them, Hubert: "La haine attire la haine!", "hatred breeds hatred". Kassovitz was awarded the Best Director prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
The film follows the lives of three friends of Abdel, all young men from immigrant families, over approximately the next twenty consecutive hours.
Vinz, a young Jewish man with an aggressive temperament, seeks revenge for Abdel's injuries. He harbors a deep hatred for all police officers and secretly emulates Travis Bickle, from the American film Taxi Driver, posturing in front of his bathroom mirror. italic=no, a Christian Afro-French boxer and small-time drug dealer, aspires to escape the banlieue and create a better life for himself. But, his boxing gymnasium was destroyed in the riots. italic=no, a young North African Muslim, acts as a mediator between Vinz and italic=no, who constantly argue.
The three friends lead a directionless daily routine and frequently find themselves under police surveillance. At a rooftop party that is broken up by the police, Vinz insults a plainclothes officer. After the trio leaves, Vinz reveals that he has discovered the .44 Magnum revolver lost during the riot. He plans to use it to kill a police officer if Abdel dies. While italic=no disapproves, Vinz secretly takes the gun with him. They try to visit Abdel in the hospital but are stopped by the police. italic=no is arrested after they aggressively refuse to leave, but he is later released with the assistance of a police officer who knows his brother.
Vinz and italic=no disagree about their perspectives on policing and violence, and they temporarily part ways. italic=no accompanies Vinz, while italic=no briefly returns home.
They reunite at another gathering in the banlieue. It descends into chaos when Abdel's brother attempts to murder a police officer as an act of revenge. In a confrontation with the police, the three narrowly escape after Vinz almost shoots a riot officer. They board a train to Paris. Their interactions with both friendly and hostile Parisians cause several encounters to escalate into risky confrontations.
In a public restroom, they encounter a Polish survivor of the gulag. He tells them a story about a man who froze to death after refusing to relieve himself in public near the train and failing to re-board it in time. The trio don't understand what the story means.
Later, they visit italic=no, a frequent cocaine user who owes money to italic=no. Tempers rise as italic=no appears to force Vinz to play Russian roulette, but the gun was secretly unloaded. Later they encounter plainclothes police officers who arrest italic=no and italic=no, while Vinz manages to escape. The police officers verbally and physically abuse the duo before jailing them until late at night. The three miss the last train home from Saint-Lazare station and spend the night on the streets.
After failing to hot-wiring a car and being kicked out of an art gallery, the trio make their way to a rooftop, where they insult some passing . They take shelter in a shopping mall, where they hear a news broadcast reporting Abdel's death. Later, Vinz disappears. Hubert and italic=no find him pointing a finger gun at a police officer; the two angrily abandon Vinz at the mall.
But, Hubert and italic=no later encounter the group of skinheads they had harassed, who now mercilessly attack them. Vinz intervenes and holds one of the skinheads at gunpoint. Although Hubert pushes for Vinz to kill the guy, he hesitates and finally lets the skinhead go.
In the early morning, the trio returns home. Vinz gives the gun to italic=no. Vinz and italic=no encounter the officer whom Vinz had insulted at the rooftop party. The officer seizes Vinz, threatening him with a loaded gun against his head. italic=no rushes to their aid, but the officer accidentally discharges his gun, killing Vinz.
Hubert and the officer enter a Mexican standoff, with each pointing a gun at the other. During the standoff, Hubert, in voiceover, tells a story with the image of a man falling from a building, assuring himself that everything is fine, as a metaphor for society's decline. italic=no closes his eyes, and a gunshot is heard. The outcome is not revealed.
The majority of the filming was done in the Parisian suburb of italic=no. Unstaged footage was used for this film, taken from 1986 to 1995; riots still took place during the time of filming. To actually film in the banlieues, Kassovitz, the production team and the actors, moved there for three months prior to the shooting as well as during actual filming. Due to the film's controversial subject matter, seven or eight local French councils refused to allow the film crew to film on their territory. Kassovitz was forced to temporarily rename the script Droit de Cité. Some of the actors were not professionals and the film includes many situations that were based on real events.
The music of the film was handled by French hardcore rap group Assassin, whose song "Nique la Police" (translated as "Fuck the Police") was featured in one of the scenes of the film. One of the members of Assassin, Mathias "Rockin' Squat" Crochon, is the brother of italic=no, who plays Vinz in the film.
The film is dedicated to those who died while it was being made.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 73 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Hard-hitting and breathtakingly effective, La Haine takes an uncompromising look at long-festering social and economic divisions affecting 1990s Paris." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "raw, vital and captivating". Wendy Ide of The Times stated that La Haine is "one of the most blisteringly effective pieces of urban cinema ever made."
After the film was well received upon its release in France, Alain Juppé, who was Prime Minister of France at the time, commissioned a special screening of the film for the cabinet, which ministers were required to attend. A spokesman for the Prime Minister said that, despite resenting some of the anti-police themes present in the film, Juppé found La Haine to be "a beautiful work of cinematographic art that can make us more aware of certain realities."
It was ranked number 32 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.
La Haine was also released in 4K Blu-ray format by Criterion on 2April 2024.
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